


Can't Stay Hidden

by A Bean (A_Bean)



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Gallifrey is dead af, Gallifreyan Culture (Doctor Who), Gen, HC that the doctors past lives all stay in their head in their new regeneration, Major major spoilers, S12e2 spoilers, Sad Ending, Spyfall Parts 1 and 2 Spoilers, You Have Been Warned, headcanons, incredibly sad, no happy ending, so 13 has herself and all twelve past lives talking to her in her head
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-13
Updated: 2020-01-13
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:15:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22235431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_Bean/pseuds/A%20Bean
Summary: ***SPYFALL PART 1 AND 2 MAJOR SPOILERS***A brief conversation with herself makes the Doctor reflect on more than she'd like to think about while she's stuck in this not-world of vines and racing lights, and she takes the route she's always taken: she runs away.Later, as she hangs in space over her dead planet, she understands, finally, that she can't hide from herself anymore.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 62





	Can't Stay Hidden

**Author's Note:**

> I have a personal headcanon that each incarnation of the Doctor stays in the head of the next Doctor, so like the First Doctor only had himself, and Two had himself and One, and so on. I thought Thirteen is so interesting and there's a lot of potential for her character so I wrote about it.

"Hi, Doctor."

_Oh! Hi._

The darkness around her was not abated by someone actually responding. Seven, she thought. 

_How are you doing?_ He was always kind to her.

"Good," she responded. "Just… talking to myself to prove I'm still alive. I was wondering what would you say to the others if they were here?"

She never goes to her past selves for advice. The first thing she did after she had fully regenerated was shut them out. She does not talk to them, and they stopped their efforts to talk to her, but now she's desperate and alone and she needs to feel another consciousness, even if it is inside her head, and she needs to stop panicking.

 _Don't panic,_ Six snorts unhelpfully, mirroring her thoughts. Nine laughs at this. They had been the same, a bit. Same snark, at least. 

"Of course I'm usually saying it to myself as much as I am to them," she retorts, angry at herself for being so desperate to talk to the other Doctors. Vaguely she points the sonic screwdriver at things.

 _Won't work in here_ , Ten says, crossing his arms in that way he does when he’s upset.

"Why not?" She asks, but she's instantly distracted by the white shocks of light racing down the vines around her. 

_Could be a clue_ , Five tells her, giving her the smallest urge to go after it. But it had been so brief...

"A clue to what?" She asks the fatherly version of herself, but Eleven steps in, bringing her attention to yet another one, then another and another. He'd always been more distracted than anyone else. If she had given any weight to human medical terms, she'd have called him ADHD. But she knows far better medical professionals than _humans_ , so she doesn’t think of it that way. 

And anyway, she knows she is somewhat the same. 

_What was that?_ Eleven asks her. 

"Interesting," she answers shortly. There is a part of her that wonders why she keeps them blocked out, but it is not hard to remember the reason. They hated her, and she doesn't want to hear about the mistakes she knows she's making. She is afraid of their judgement. She has made so many bad choices and she knows what they think of her. She doesn't want to be exiled by them, so she does it first to not get hurt. She's lonely all the time but she won't let them come to her. She already knows what they'll say.

She doesn't think about it and follows the lights.

 _Useful_ , Two says sarcastically- he’s always been short with his words, not to mention his height- and it bites.

"Maybe," she says. "Another!"

 _Even better_ , Three says. He is not angry with her. He has never been angry with her, and tells her now to not lose sight of the light and where it is going. Three had blocked out One and Two, and so had Seven blocked out the lot of them, though he had only done it for a moment of peace, and not out of anger (like Three) or fear (like Thirteen herself).

"What are you?" Thirteen mutters, doing her best to ignore them all. 

_Pathways?_ Nine asks, deciding to end his stony silence, curiosity getting the better of him. 

_Signals?_ Twelve adds, just as curious about this as she is.

 _Synapses?_ Four suggests, opening his mouth to add more rapid-fire words to their already-fast thought process, but One interrupts. 

_Oh, I hope it's not a liver_ , One says. _I hate being inside livers._

 _People always get so offended!_ Eight chimes in to agree. _'What are you doing in my liver again?' Ugh._

Thirteen grits her teeth, hoping to get out soon so she could shut the voices out in her head. But secretly she agrees with her Eighth self- people tended to be offended when she found herself in their livers, even by accident. 

She finds Ada, and is transported into the 1890s with the same amount of disorientation as when she had been transported into the not-world of lights and vines. Her past voices are easy to block out again, but when the Master makes her kneel before him, she feels him probe at her mind lightly.

She knows he is not being gentle. She knows she can't feel his full extent because she is disconnected from her past lives, and therefore does not possess all of her mental prowess in the area of telepathy. She can feel the humans, though, because right now in the room there's so many of them, and generally because they don't stop making even more, tinier humans. 

She also knows that the Master has no way to block out his past lives, and the drumming from all of them increases every time he regenerates, adding to his torment. 

Finally when everything is over and she's reigned in Ten (because as she wipes the memories of Ada and Noor he rears his head at her and demands to be heard and _demands_ she think of their friend Donna), she thinks of Gallifrey, and she thinks the Master cannot possibly be right about it being destroyed--

She tears down the walls separating her from her other selves, seeking comfort in the fact that she has them, _she's not alone, please don't leave me alone_ and they are all silent for as long as she needs them to be, because in their hearts they are all the same, really, and the youngest versions of her, up to Eight, they all mourn silently for the home they have not been allowed to return to. 

Nine turns away in crushing sadness. He had been born just out of war on Gallifrey. And now, the nightmares he had suffered through were real. 

Ten, as always, is silently furious. Thirteen is more like him than she would care to admit; from facial expressions to how she walks and talks and thinks and acts she is like him, she is the most like him that she has been ever since she actually _was_ him. 

Eleven screams. He has always been expressive in his voice. When he was the one to discover that Gallifrey was not where the Master had said it was, back when he was a woman, he had blocked them all out in favor of destroying his TARDIS. Thirteen does not mind the screaming. She cannot muster the energy to do it herself. She is glad that some part of her can do what she wants to do.

Twelve leaves. He blocks her off, blocks them all. He had been the one to find Gallifrey. Seeing it now was too much for him, and he had always been one to withdraw from everything emotionally, and now it is not any different.

Thirteen…

She is alone.

She has herself, but it's not the same. The Master was not one to find kinship with, no matter how much they loved or hated each other. Time Lords had each other for companionship, but the Master is different- has always been different.

And once again she's alone with only the ghosts in her head and her TARDIS, who is just as silent as the lands below her, but makes her pain felt all the same. It's not the same. It's not the same as being in unison with the rest of her people. It's not the same as sharing a joke with one of her friends just by thinking of an image or symbol or phrase and laughing together; it's not the same as being with other Time Lords in fellowship as they live and breathe together under the same suns and the same cities and being with her people.

It's not the same and at this point she is so utterly, desperately hopeless that she just….

Collapses. 

She sobs for an eternity. 

She does not know how she finds the strength to get up. She doesn't know how she keeps going. But now- now, they don't hate her, and she realizes they never have.

She hates herself.

But they do not, and for now she can live with that, instead of being alone over a planet erased from history.


End file.
